I know I'm probably pissing on a bushfire with this one, but I have a dead Sata HDD. Plug in the power and nothing. Any thoughts on weather there is a chance of getting any data off it? It's not important info, as all the "good" stuff was backed up.

It's definately dead, as I've tried different ports and power, but no luck.

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our local dat recovery shop can usually get anything off anything as long as it is there in some shape or form

it a balancing act of how much the data is worth to how much they are going to charge you

you say the data was backed up so really there's no need to go any further, the only real benefit would be to 'test' the data recovery firm to see what they could do but again this would have to be weighed against the cost

As for the actual question, it sounds like the electronics are fried if there is no power at all. If you have a spare drive handy that is the exact same model and revision number (if it's not exact, chances are it won't work at all) you could try swapping the board over and see if that works. that was the first thing the DR guys at a place I used to work did. around 80% of the time that was all there was to it.

That thought did cross my mind, but, and there is always a but, the drive that is dead is one of only 2 WD drives I have. I prefer to stick with Seagate for this very reason. Unfortunately the boards are nothing alike. :(

I might keep banging it on the bench to see if I can get any data out of it.

If the drive will not power up, then freezing it or smashing it with a hammer will not help (the drive).

If you can find an identical drive, you may get lucky and be able to swap the platters, although this would be a very temporary fix as unless you have a "clean room" then the finished cobbled together drive will most certainly fail in the near future due to impurities within the platter's chassis causing destruction. If the data being rescued was of medium importance, I'd follow this route. If the data was of high importance, send it out to a specialized data recovery firm and expect to pay several thousand dollars.

As this is only an "excercise", go with the big hammer and enjoy yourself!

Don't think the issue is only with WD drives. I had a Seagate do exactly that. Fortunately all I was missing are some obsolete Quicken files and some music I recorded using a multi-track studio application. Wish I could get the music back as all it needed was a little tweaking to be really good.

Don't think the issue is only with WD drives. I had a Seagate do exactly that. Fortunately all I was missing are some obsolete Quicken files and some music I recorded using a multi-track studio application. Wish I could get the music back as all it needed was a little tweaking to be really good.

Indeed, I've been hearing more of this about Seagate lately than WD; but it certainly happens across the board.

WD drives appear to fail more frequently than their competitors. It's just my opinion, and I may be exposed to more WD drives than other manufacturers, but I stick by it.

At the same time though, their failure rate may be because they are pushing the technology envelope too far, because if I remember correctly, they're usually first to market on a lot of the advances.

And, to get back on topic, my personal favorite is to disassemble the drives, and take the magnets and platters. The platters make good frisbees (as long as you don't throw them at someone too hard) and the magnets make cool little statues as you gather more and more of them. Plus, you get to see all the failures -- we had a server hard drive that I pulled apart, only to find that the head crashed so badly, it was scraping the metallic surface off the platter!

I was reading about problems with a printer mb and a suggestion was to hit the mb with a heat gun for a few seconds. The idea being is that sometimes the connections crack and hitting them with the heat lets them resolder themselves. Got to be careful though or data might melt.

I was reading about problems with a printer mb and a suggestion was to hit the mb with a heat gun for a few seconds. The idea being is that sometimes the connections crack and hitting them with the heat lets them resolder themselves. Got to be careful though or data might melt.

I read the same thing, but it offered an explanation (that I believed):

Some of HP's newer printers have switched mounting technologies -- instead of PGA (Pin Grid Array -- a bunch of pins on the bottom of the chip) they switched to BGA (Ball Grid Array -- a bunch of solder balls on the bottom of the chip). Some of the BGA chips had a fault, either in the solder or the process of attaching them to the board where the solder would crack over time. Heating up the chip to the solder's melting point would cause the solder to re-flow, re-establishing the electrical connection to the board.

The real question is, does the hard drive in question use the same technology? If so, it might be worth trying.

WD drives appear to fail more frequently than their competitors. It's just my opinion, and I may be exposed to more WD drives than other manufacturers, but I stick by it.

At the same time though, their failure rate may be because they are pushing the technology envelope too far, because if I remember correctly, they're usually first to market on a lot of the advances.

And, to get back on topic, my personal favorite is to disassemble the drives, and take the magnets and platters. The platters make good frisbees (as long as you don't throw them at someone too hard) and the magnets make cool little statues as you gather more and more of them. Plus, you get to see all the failures -- we had a server hard drive that I pulled apart, only to find that the head crashed so badly, it was scraping the metallic surface off the platter!

Funny, I've always felt that Seagates were more prone to failure. It's all perspective.

Anyway, I've had a lot of success getting data off of dead drives (drives that can't boot up) by plugging them into USB "cages" and treating them like an external drive. Course, this won't work if the electronics are fried or there's some real mechanical issue.